The Social and Environmental Costs of the Water Management System of Chile: Inequalities in a Context of Scarcity

Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to present a more complete picture of Chile’s water management system in terms of the three pillars of sustainable development, namely regarding the social, environmental, and economic outcomes of the 1981 Water Code. The contribution of this research relies in the understanding of the law’s reproduction of socio- ecological inequalities and in the investigation of a possible link between commercial agricultural activities and prices of potable water in the sixteen administrative regions of Chile. The mixed-methods approach consists of the application of the Critical Environmental Justice Framework on the 1981 Water Code and the econometric estimation of the relationship between the agricultural sector’s contribution to regional GDP and potable water prices in the summer and winter seasons. The results suggest that the Water Code encourages the reproduction of inequalities over time and across space to the detriment of vulnerable communities and of water resources themselves, but they cannot confirm a relationship between agricultural water extraction and prices of potable water faced by consumers. For this reason, future research should focus on the impact of over-extraction on the determinants of potable water prices, and policies should shift Chile’s water resources management to a more integrated and holistic approach.